Rare Resources

Whilst basic resources are ubiqutious, there exist two classes of rare and special resources with particular uses.

Enhanced Munitions

Certain types of rare resource can be used to enhance military capabilities. These must all be extracted and refined before being suitable for manufacturing munitions.

• Rare metals can used in mirror fields to enhance a deflector field’s strength against nova emission effectors
• Superheavy metals can be used in ablative armour charges to better mitigate damage from antimatter.
• E-filaments are used to produce complex nova emission charges of greater intensity than the K-filament equivalents.
• Q-filaments are used to produce collapsed antimatter charges with better penetrative capability than regular antimatter.

Luxury Resources

Although most factions operate theoretically as post-scarcity economies, pretty much every civilization has retained a regrettable demand for goods that can be used to show one’s social status. As a result there is still a thriving inter-faction trade in rare luxury goods, where supply is constrained by their availability only to a single system or world. Many of these items can be easily duplicated by manufacturing or artificial propagation off-world, and there is a thriving underground market for such fakes, but trade in the original is highly regulated and connoisseurs swear they can tell the difference between a tea grown in the valley floors of Atashur and an otherwise indistinguishable formula grown in vast quantities in orbital agricultural stations by the Astio Theocracy. Apparently the sunlight on Atashur has something peculiar about it that infuses the leaves with a kind of spiritual energy absent from other formulations. Strangely, such connoisseurs can never distinguish between the original and a fake under controlled conditions, which is also apparently something to do with negative energy implicit under test conditions destroying the spiritual energy of the real tea and leaving both samples equally bland.

Should you be fortunate enough to gain stewardship of a system with rare resources, it is well worth exporting it to other factions as a source of Drams. Luxury resources are grouped into several categories and multiple sources of each type may be found distributed around the cluster. This is not to imply that the luxury resources are simple commodities. The fruits of one world are unique and not replaceable by the fruits from another world, but there is a limited demand for fruits in general in any system.

All Rare Resources

Type	Use	Location
Rare Metals	Munitions	Planets, satellites, and asteroid belts
Super-heavy Metals	Munitions	Planets, satellites, and asteroid belts
E Filaments	Munitions	Filament fields around neutron stars
Q Filaments	Munitions	Filament fields around black holes
Phenomenal Gemstones	Merchandise	Planets with high gravity, high atmospheric pressure, and high temperature. Extracted as gem bearing ore, they must be refined into uncut form then processed in specialist product factories
Polished Ornamental Minerals	Merchandise	Planets with high gravity, high atmospheric pressure, and high temperature. Extracted in raw form, they must be refined into dressed form then polished in specialist product factories
Exotic Pets	Merchandise	Planets with temperatures, pressures, and surface gravity conducive to life
Psychoactive Herbs	Merchandise	Planets with temperatures, pressures, and surface gravity conducive to life
Indigenous Spices	Merchandise	Planets with temperatures, pressures, and surface gravity conducive to life
Delectable Fruits	Merchandise	Planets with temperatures, pressures, and surface gravity conducive to life
Aromatic Beverage	Merchandise	Planets with temperatures, pressures, and surface gravity conducive to life
Exquisite Flowers	Merchandise	Planets with temperatures, pressures, and surface gravity conducive to life
Essential Oils	Merchandise	Planets with temperatures, pressures, and surface gravity conducive to life